Google Cloud launched Agentic Defense at Cloud Next 2026 on April 22, a security operations platform that deploys autonomous AI agents to detect and respond to threats targeting enterprise AI systems. The platform combines Google’s Threat Intelligence and Security Operations with Wiz’s AI Application Protection Platform, which Google acquired earlier this year.
Three New Security Agents
Google introduced three autonomous agents within Google Security Operations, each targeting a specific security operations bottleneck, according to Google Cloud’s security blog:
Threat Hunting agent (now in preview) proactively searches for novel attack patterns and adversary behaviors that bypass traditional rule-based defenses.
Detection Engineering agent (now in preview) identifies coverage gaps in existing detection rules and automatically creates new detections for emerging threat scenarios. Google framed this as transforming detection creation “from a manual craft into an automated science.”
Third-Party Context agent (coming soon to preview) enriches security workflows with contextual data from external sources.
These join an existing Triage and Investigation agent that has processed over 5 million alerts in the past year. Google stated the triage agent reduces a typical 30-minute manual analysis to 60 seconds using Gemini, per the security blog.
BBVA’s head of Security Technology, Diego Martinez Blanco, described the triage agent’s operational impact in a statement published by Google: “It handles the initial heavy lifting and filters out false positives so we can prioritize issues that require human attention. The agent’s transparent explanations allow our team to understand recommendations and ultimately dedicate our resources to more complex investigations.”
Wiz AI Application Protection Platform
Wiz’s contribution focuses on protecting the AI development lifecycle itself. The AI Application Protection Platform (AI-APP), first announced at RSA Conference, provides visibility, risk posture assessment, and runtime analysis for AI applications across cloud environments, according to Google’s blog.
Wiz expanded coverage to agent development studios from multiple vendors: AWS Agentcore, Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, Microsoft Azure Copilot Studio, and Salesforce Agentforce. The cross-platform support means enterprises running agents across competing cloud providers can manage security posture from a single Wiz console.
Additional integrations announced include Google Cloud Apigee for API discovery, Cloudflare AI Security for application protection, Vercel platform support, and Databricks, all feeding into Wiz’s Security Graph, per the security blog.
The Threat Landscape Driving the Launch
Google cited its own research showing adversaries using AI to accelerate the speed, scale, and sophistication of attacks. M-Trends 2026 data showed that the time for threat actors to hand off from initial access to a secondary actor dropped from eight hours to 22 seconds over the past three years, according to the security blog.
Sundar Pichai reinforced the urgency in his keynote blog, noting that Google’s own Security Operations Center agents “automatically triage tens of thousands of unstructured threat reports each month, reducing threat mitigation time by more than 90%.”
IDC Research Vice President Christopher Kissel endorsed the approach in a statement published by Google: “Organizations leveraging an intelligence-led, AI-augmented approach to modern security operations with Google Cloud’s agentic defense can realize a strong ROI.”
Separate from Existing Agent Security Announcements
Agentic Defense is distinct from Zero Networks’ AI Segmentation platform, which NCT covered on April 22. Zero Networks focuses on identity-based access control and lateral movement prevention for agents. Google’s platform operates at the security operations layer: threat detection, automated response, and AI workload protection across multi-cloud environments.
The launch also adds remote Google Cloud MCP server support for Google Security Operations, now generally available, enabling security teams to build custom security agents. Dark web intelligence capabilities in Google Threat Intelligence, now in preview, can analyze millions of daily external events with 98% accuracy to surface relevant threats, per the security blog.
The Recursive Security Problem
Agentic Defense creates a notable architectural pattern: autonomous agents securing autonomous agents. Google is using AI to defend against AI-accelerated threats while simultaneously protecting the AI agents that enterprises deploy. For security teams evaluating agent deployment risk, this platform provides the first integrated answer from a major cloud provider. The cross-platform Wiz coverage across Google, Microsoft, AWS, and Salesforce agent studios means security teams do not have to choose a single vendor’s agent platform to get unified threat visibility.